The Magician on the Hill
by Myrrat-Sade
Summary: In an era long past, a group of wizards hidden among the Hebrews sacrifice one of their own. Jesus as an historic wizard. AU for the Bible and barely anything HP involved; likely offensive to Christians. Consider yourself warned.
1. Not How It Was Supposed To End

**Chapter 1: Not how it was supposed to end**

This was not how it was supposed to end.

_Crack!_ He stumbled, his burden heavy on his back tied there by the soldiers, as the whip hit him squarely across his thighs. A rough laugh from the guard, and then a rotten fig smashed into his chest, thrown by one of the women watching and taunting him from the street side.

Fuck! He was more powerful than these people! This couldn't be happening. He strained his hands, but they were bound too tightly.

Where were his followers? Where was his mother?

The line of prisoners marched onward, toward the killing hills.

He had some time. He would figure something out.

~o~

_The Prefect had rubbed his eyes. He looked so tired, not that the crowds noticed. They were screaming for blood. If they didn't get the magician's blood, they would start calling for his own. _

_Why was this damnable magician causing so much trouble? _

_He was not a novice to the magician's claims. His own mother, back in the far northern highlands, was a magician, too, although weak. _

_Oh, she'd hidden it from his noble father on their rare meetings, when he brought money for his bastard's schooling, when he'd brought weapons for his training, even when he'd come to send the child away to Rome. Pontius had inherited nothing of her skills, but he'd seen her perform wonders when he was a child. He could have used those skills, but instead he was merely good with a spear, good on a horse, good with words. _

_He'd done well, for a half-Pictish bastard in Rome, but now this magician could ruin it all. _

"_Why do you have to be so difficult?" he had asked the man. _

_The man had merely smiled. "It's destiny. I should rule these people. I give them what they want, what they need, what they crave. They love me and so I love them. They follow me and so I lead them. What has your king ever given them?"_

_What, indeed? Tiberius was a good ruler, as rulers go, but he couldn't match this man's seeming miracles. Magic, witchcraft, tricks, godhead. They couldn't tell the difference. _

"_Your own people hate you," Pontius had countered. _

"_I frighten them because they see my power and they don't want to believe," the magician said serenely._

"_You should never have shown so much. Why couldn't you just live a quiet life? You're going to die. You know that."_

_The man had merely smiled again, and turned his eyes away, looking into the distance. So arrogant. So powerful. _

_Pontius had just shaken his head, finally. "I can protect you no longer. I wash my hands of it. You made this happen. May my own mother forgive me for killing one of her kind." _

_If this revelation had startled the man, he showed no sign of it. _

~o~

At the killing hill, he and the rest of the prisoners had been strapped up to uprights, a little taller than a man, planted in the ground. So many men had died here; he could feel it all around him. The others were insensitive to it, of course, but here were a few ghosts, men like him who had died on the hill. They hovered around, watching him.

"No use fighting it," one said. "They won't suffer us to live."

He just glared at them. Ghosts were useless.

When all the prisoners had been strapped up on their uprights, the main body of guards had moved away again, leaving a few to keep the crowd in check. Sometimes, a family member would attempt a rescue. But mainly the crowds were there to taunt and shout. The people swelled closer now, but they were not showing their usual level of bloodthirstiness, especially toward the murderers who usually got the worst of it. Word had spread that there was a magician on the hill, but they weren't sure who it was yet.

It was only time before someone recognized him through his bloody and swollen face, or before one of the guards pointed him out.

Where the fuck was his mother?

Where the fuck was his _wife_?

Why weren't they rescuing him, as they'd planned?

~o~

It had been hours, and the sun stood overhead. The other prisoners were weak, dying now. He was weak, too, and acting weaker to hide himself. Magicians were stronger than normal people.

The guards had kept quiet about him, so he guessed Pilate had ordered them to keep it to themselves. Maybe these didn't even know. But now the crowd was figuring it out, realizing that alone among the prisoners, he was still more aware than the others. Maybe he had moaned too loudly; aware though he was, he was not as coherent as he would have liked to be.

The crowd moved in, and a woman lobbed another rotten fig. He tried to ignore it, and slumped his head, but that pulled on the ropes around his wrists and it hurt his shoulders. He winced.

Another rotten thing hit him, this time an egg. The crowd surged forward, and then the shouting started in earnest, although he tried to block it out. They'd found him.

Lifting his head, he looked at them, catching an eye here and there, stopping those who looked at him in their tracks. He was getting angrier now, his weakness ebbing as fury filled him. "Leave me alone, you savages," he snarled.

Another egg hit him, right on his chest. He screamed, and as he did so, he felt something snap in him.

Normally, he couldn't do magic wordlessly. He had always been about the ritual and the grandiose gestures. Waving a staff around and calling on the God of his fathers to assist him always impressed upon people that his gifts were god-given. He neglected the magic that sometimes came unbidden; he had little use for it. But now his weakened, dying body fought back. Above him, clouds began to swirl, dark and angry as he was.

"The sun! The sun! He's blotting out the sun!" he heard people shout. There were a few more half-hearted thrown vegetables, but the sudden darkness scared them now, and they backed off, afraid of more reprisals.

He blacked out, then, as exhaustion swelled over him.

~o~

**_Notes:_**  
><em>Pontius Pilate is sometimes thought to be the bastard son of a Roman nobleman, who was sent to Scotland, and a Pictish woman. His name suggests he was a good spearman andor a good horseman. I've made him a half-blood squib, essentially. By most accounts, Pilate was very reluctant to condemn Jesus, but did so due to pressure from the people._


	2. The Plan

**Chapter 2: The Plan**

"Wake up," said a small voice. A sweet voice. _Maria!_

He opened his eyes and there she was, standing on a stool to reach his face, wiping it with a damp cloth.

He tried to smile at her. "Finally," he wheezed. She smiled softly back, but she looked troubled.

"It was difficult," she said, as she soothed him. "By the time we were able to get away and come up here, you'd made it all dark. The ground rumbled."

"Yes," he agreed. "Dark. Was angry. Save me?"

She looked away. "You mother is here."

Her face moved away, and a few seconds later, there was his mother's face instead.

"Mother?"

"I'm here, son," she said, and held up a battered tin cup of water to his lips. The liquid soothed his mouth, and let him talk.

"Mother, look at me," he said to her. "I'm dying. How?"

"We all die, even magicians. I will die. Your father died."

"My father. Who was he? Not the carpenter, I know that."

Mariam shook her head, refusing to the end to tell him of her shame, refusing to be shamed by it. "A magician, like us. He's dead. It doesn't matter."

"Save me!"

"No. We can't." She lifted the cup to his mouth again.

"What?" He couldn't believe this. His fury flared again, and he swung his head at her, knocking the cup from her hand with his chin. The clouds above roiled.

"Son, you've drawn too much attention to yourself. We will keep working for your goals, but you are beyond saving now."

He slumped, not acting now. They would let him die? Fools. Fools! He was the only one who could lead them. He had fulfilled so many archaic prophecies, studied them so he could fulfill them, and the people would only follow him!

His mother touched his chest with a hidden length of wood she kept under her sleeve, and whispered words, ancient and powerful.

He knew nothing else.

~o~

"He's dead," said the old woman to the nearby guard, stepping down from the stool. "I'm his mother."

Maria turned away, blinking. She'd agreed, at last, to let him go, but her heart ached, and she wrapped her arms around herself. So much she'd wanted for him, with him, but he had thrown it away for power and, in the end, gained so little for them all.

A man stepped forward from the crowd of supporters. "Miriam," he said, gesturing at a rock outcropping, "My name is Joseph. I have a tomb, just there. It is his now. I've made the arrangements with the authorities."

She nodded. This was all pre-planned, but certain forms must be followed, and it was best not to give them impression that they were still a group. The Romans were still wary of them. A small group of magicians living amongst the Hebrews, causing trouble for the Empire, was not something that could be ignored. He had insisted on rocking the boat, doing miracles for the masses and the Romans had found them out. This was why they had to sacrifice him. Alive, he was too dangerous.

Joseph climbed onto the stool. He pulled out a knife and sawed away at the ropes, freeing one of the dead man's arms. A few of the followers stepped forward and held the body while he sawed at the other ropes. When he as freed, they bore him away.

As he started after them, Joseph stopped to pick up the discarded cup, looking at it. It was one of his, manufactured from tin mined in faraway lands. He and the dead man had traveled there, in happier times. He looked at it, astonished. The battered tin gleamed golden, but the shape and design was the same.

He placed it in his bag, and then hurried toward the tomb.

~o~

In the tomb, Mariam and Maria had tended him, worked spells and treated his wounds. He wasn't actually dead, Maria had explained to Joseph, but he wasn't going to survive long.

"Just one more prophecy to fulfill," she'd said. He nodded and stirred the small cauldron with a length of hawthorn, as he helped make the potion to keep his lord going just a few more days. They'd pour a small amount down his throat every few hours to keep him alive. On the appointed day, they'd bring him back to consciousness, and he'd fulfill the last of the prophecies, and then he'd be allowed his final slumber.

Three days later, on a mixture of potions, spells, and furious will-power, he'd spoken to his followers one more time. They never saw him again, but his work was done.

~o~

"Go back to your tin works," Maria had told Joseph later. "Spread our word northward." And he had gone, and with him, his hawthorn staff and the now golden cup.

**_Notes:_**

_Christian mythology sometimes maintains that Joseph of Aramathea (not the be confused with the carpenter Joseph, Jesus' mother's husband) was a rich merchant who had traveled with Jesus to England during the years where nothing much is known about Jesus' whereabouts. Blake's "Jerusalem," poem is a reference to this. Even assuming Jesus was real, this probably didn't really happen._

_Assuming the Gospels are at all right about anything, Joseph of Aramathea did in fact donate his brand new tomb to Jesus, which was not a common thing. It was actually a big risk because it suggested he was in a sense adopting Jesus into his family, and Pilate had had to approve the use of the tomb for Jesus, hence the "forms that must be followed."_

_The darkness from the 6th hour to the 9th (noon to 3pm) is in some of the gospels, too, as is an earthquake. Accidental magic of an angry, dying wizard?_


	3. The Thorn Tree

**Chapter 3: The Thorn Tree**

The islands were nothing like Arimathea, his beloved Judea. The Levant was a place of deserts and low scrub, and brown, craggy mountains. Here was greenery as he had never imagined before he first came here in search of tin. It was here that he had made his wealth and it was here, now, that he brought the story of the Christos. He had traveled to the Northern Pictish lands where the villain Pilate himself had been born, and to the lowlands.

Where he found other magicians, he told them the true story: that the Christos was an unusually strong lord of magic who had sought to bring the rest of humanity to follow him, but that the Romans had feared his strength and his ability to speak to the lowliest and raise them up. They had particularly not appreciated his attempts to destroy their banking systems. And, ultimately, they had put him down like a dog, leaving his own mother and wife to continue his plan while he lay dead in Joseph's own tomb. It was nothing magicians did not expect of the rabble of non-magical folk; power was too rare, too far between, to provide any real safety, even when the magic itself was strong. They shook their heads and differed on how to deal with these threats.

But for the rest, the non-magical folk, he told them of the miracles the Christos had performed. He spun the myths: the Immaculate Conception – Miriam born herself without sin so that she might be the cauldron of God's seed – and the virgin birth. He told of water changed to wine, and loaves and fishes to feed the hungry. Where he went, his own miracles bloomed: small favors from God, he told them, and they begged for more.

From the golden cup – the old, battered tin cup transformed by the Christos in a fit of anger – he poured water into their mouths and told them he gave them the sacred healing tears of the Christos. He healed minor wounds. They thought nothing of his staff of hawthorn, which he carried with him everywhere. It was the symbol, he said, of his Lord's shepherding of them, his flocks of faithful.

On the spring equinox, at flooded Sommerset, he took a boat to Glastonbury Tor, where he planned to build a small church for the followers of his Lord. It was an ancient site of the native religions, although not one of the more prominent sites, which were in use by his own people for their magical rites. With a crowd watching, he stood on the mound that was sometimes a hill and sometimes an island when the fens flooded, and he performed his greatest miracles.

First, at the small muddy spring, he placed the golden cup on a stone and, using his staff, drew two interlocking circles on the ground. With a word, he hit the ground and one circle caved in, water flowing up from the spring and gushing down the hillside. "This water," he told the crowd "will always carry the healing of the Christos." The cup tumbled into the spring, and some said it was not seen again.

Further down the Tor, on a small hill, he struck his hawthorn staff into the ground, and with a quiet chant, saw it rooted and flowering. "This thorn tree will bloom for the Christos' birth and for his rebirth," he told the assembled.

In later years, after he'd married a cunning hedge witch with more wild magic in her than he'd seen since Miriam, he took his daughter down to the well late one night. Together they summoned the cup up from the depths. "Your daughters and their daughters will find a use for it," he said, and in years to come, it would prove true.

Notes:

Christian mythology sometimes maintains that Joseph of Arimathea (not the be confused with the carpenter Joseph, Jesus' mother's husband) was a rich merchant who had traveled with Jesus to England during the years where nothing much is known about Jesus' whereabouts. Blake's "Jerusalem," poem is a reference to this. By the 1100s, there was a rich set of legends about his return to England with a staff and the Holy Grail. The staff, it was said, rooted itself in Wearyall Hill, where it bloomed twice a year, at Christmas and Easter, until it was killed in the 1500s. The Holy Grail was dropped into the iron-rich (and thus reddish) spring, which is now known as the Chalice Well, which is said to flow with the blood of Christ. Glastonbury Tor, of course, is the hill that rises above Sommerset Levels – or Summerland – and is the legendary home and tomb of the mythical King Arthur, who sent his knights to find the lost grail.

Of course, I think that something else could have happened to it.


End file.
